nine years after the derailment of a TGV in Alsace, the emotion still strong from the first witness to the tragedy

The trial of the derailment of a test TGV train which caused the death of 11 people and injured 42 others in Alsace on November 14, 2015, opens Monday in Paris. SNCF, three of its employees and two of its subsidiaries are accused.

This is the most serious TGV accident in French history. A TGV train which lies vertically in the water of a canal for hours in Ecwkersheim in Alsace. While France is in shock from the attacks committed the day before at the Bataclan, the image remains vivid in the memories of the victims and witnesses of the accident which occurred on the 14 November 2015.

The first to come to the aid of the travelers before the rescue was Robert Pfrimmer, 86 years. He lives next to the railway tracks and went there straight away. “At 2:03 p.m., I heard a dull noise, like a machine gun. There were catenaries hanging down, which were still on fire. A few moments later, a door opened and the driver of the rear engine got out. and who staggers. I am going towards him”, remembers the octogenarian. A dialogue then begins between the two men.

“He tells me: ‘we were speeding’. I ask him how many of them there are, eight, ten ? He answers : ‘No, fifty, at least’.”

Robert Pfrimmer, first on the scene of the accident

at franceinfo

“Even today, I get goosebumps when I think about it,” says Robert Pfrimmer.

Excessive speed at the heart of the trial

The excessive speed of the TGV and the late braking are at the heart of the trial file which opens on Monday 4 March, almost nine years later. SNCF, three of its employees and two of its subsidiaries are on trial until 16 May for “injuries and involuntary homicides due to clumsiness, imprudence, negligence or breach of a safety obligation” at the Paris Criminal Court. This 14 November 2015, the SNCF organized a final test to open this Alsatian section of the TGV-Est line to high speed with, in the train, railway workers and numerous guests. For the victims and their loved ones, including around fifty represented by lawyer Gérard Chemla, many questions arise. “We must understand how we were able, in such conditions, to scuttle the flagship of the SNCF. How does this happen? ? There must be an essential component: the attitude of the people being prosecuted. Are we going to have people who will take responsibility ? The near future will tell us.”

The hearing promises to be tense because the SNCF places the responsibility on one of its subsidiaries involved in this test. An accusation that Philippe Goossens, the lawyer for this company, Systra, refutes at the microphone of France Bleu Alsace. “Systra considers that it is not responsible for the tragic accident which occurred during these tests. Systra was not in charge of driving and had requested a maximum speed. This speed was known, it should have been respect”, defends the lawyer. The train had derailed at 265 km/h in a curve where the maximum speed should have been limited to 176 km/h.

Safety procedures reviewed since the accident

First moment expected Monday afternoon, the explanations at the bar of the former CEO of the SCF Guillaume Pepy. The very name of Eckwersheim remains a trauma in the memory of many railway workers, trade unionists unanimously confide, as the TGV was a point of pride internally, a guarantee of absolute safety. But the various investigation reports since 2015 have seemed damning about the chain of errors and breaches of safety rules.

The SNCF has since reviewed the procedures, particularly regarding braking, with the installation of an emergency system in the test trains which is triggered in the event of an incident. It has also been prohibited since then to take on board people from outside the test, in other words, guests, or to have more than four people in the driving cabin. A protocol rigorously applied while, since last year, the different test phases of the new generation TGV-M have been taking place on the French rail network.